Steady Mom kicked off my online journey back in 2009. (Yes, I am a dinosaur grandma in internet time.)
My first online home, I blogged there regularly from 2009-2016 during days raising/corralling three tiny humans.
Before social media, all the mothers looking for community gathered online for encouragement, connected through comments, and found each other across space and time.
I felt woefully inadequate at the task; some of the blogs I read were so beautiful. They were doing amazing, impressive things! I wanted to do impressive things too.
My husband Steve and the kids remember the time I made salt dough for art projects, to document in photos for the blog. Looking back, this was the most un-Jamie like thing possible. It’s so NOT me!
Steve and I still laugh about the natural Easter egg dyes I spent hours making, pots and vegetable peels strewn across every kitchen surface. Then the dyes not actually working very well.
In the end, we added 50 cent food coloring tablets to make the colors more impressive for the kids. lol
Slowly I figured out that I needed to do what I loved: Pick beautiful books off the shelf, read them when my kids wanted, then write about it.
I found I needed to write about not only beautiful things in our lives, but give voice to hard stuff too.
Steady Mom helped me feel less alone. Incredibly, it helped a loyal group of readers feel less alone, too.
It led me to my second online child, Simple Homeschool, which eventually led to my third, Introverted Moms. Steady Mom opened the door to my first book and the other three that followed.
Yet all seasons eventually come to an end.
Steady Mom was hosted on Typepad, one of the popular platforms used by early bloggers. That platform no longer exists, which means Steady Mom doesn’t either. 😫
But thank goodness for books! I’m not sure how I found the time to create them, but I’m so glad I did! I formatted and printed five years of Steady Mom’s content and photos into bound books.
I thought they’d be nice for the kids to have one day – a documentation of childhood in photos and words. Even though we didn’t have much discretionary income at that time, I ordered a copy for each of them and for me as well.
So Steady Mom lives on, after all – another beautiful book we can pick off the shelf.
It’s proof that in spite of our individual limitations and imperfections (and there were so many), we lived and loved well.
I’m grateful.